OPBGunther Eggersdorf goes hunting nearly every day outside his village in Bavaria. He takes me down to the basement room where he keeps his guns.

“Here are the weapons,” says Eggersdorf. “Must be in the dresser. I have only the key. So I can only open this.” He unlocks a tall, black safe that’s as tall as him and shows his eight firearms.

Like all gun owners in Germany, he’s required to store his weapons in a locked safe.And if gun owners don’t have firearms stowed away, the consequences are serious. Law enforcers go door to door and randomly check on gun owners. If officials find that a gun owner doesn’t have their weapons in a safe, they could lose their guns, be fined, or go to jail. The father of the 17-year-old gunman in Winnenden was tried and sentenced for leaving his pistol in his bedroom, where his son could access it.

Still, there are more than five point four million legal firearms in this country, or about 30 guns for every 100 people. That’s the fourth highest per capita rate in the world, behind the U.S., Switzerland, and Finland.In Germany, you have to have a good reason for owning a gun, like if you’re a sport shooter, hunter or in rare cases, a gun collector. You can’t buy a firearm simply for personal protection—self-defense doesn’t count as a necessity here. The yearlong licensing process involves written tests and shooting practice, and costs several thousand Euros. Every applicant is background checked. And starting this year, every gun owner is tracked on a national register.According to a 2009 poll by German public television, most Germans support strict gun regulation. But even with the policies currently in place, gun deaths and gun crimes still happen. Each year, about 200 people are killed by guns.

CSMA school shooting that left a teacher in Nevada dead last week brings the number of such shootings in the United States to 17 since last December’s tragedy in Newtown, Conn. Also last week, a Washington state boy was arrested after he brought a gun and 400 rounds of ammunition to his middle school.

As Americans reflect on these horrifying events, we should also consider how preventable they were. In fact, many of the school shootings this year and in the past could have been prevented with just common-sense safety measures in the home – no new legislation or rules needed.

The gun used in the shooting in Sparks, Nevada – which left the teacher and the shooter, his 12-year-old student, dead and two classmates seriously wounded – was a Ruger 9mm semi-automatic handgun that was apparently taken by the child from his home. While it isn’t yet known exactly how he gained access to this dangerous weapon, it is highly likely that serious safety measures were not put in place by the parents, allowing an immature mind to once again wield terrible power.

In the last year, this devastating scenario has played out again and again. School shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minn., in 2005, and Heath High School inWest Paducah, Ky., in 1997 also involved legal guns taken from the home, used by young people who clearly should not have been able to carry them to school as easily as they would a packed lunch. Sadly, it is perhaps more surprising that these incidents don’t occur more regularly. A 2005 study on firearm access in America showed that 1.69 million children under the age of 18 lived in homes with loaded and unlocked firearms.

Yeah, no new laws would be required if only the lawful owners of guns would lock them up. But, guess what? That ain't gonna happen any time soon. Why? Because too many gun owners are either too stupid or too uncaring to do so.

The solution: mandatory safe storage of firearms in the home. Gun owners need to be legally constrained to do what's right.

Police in Bangor, Maine, say a 3-year-old child is hospitalized with a life-threatening injury following an apparent accidental shooting in the family's apartment.

Officials say the child, whose name is not being released, was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center with a single gunshot wound to the neck.

Sgt. Catherine Rumsey said Thursday the shooting appears to be accidental, and that police are continuing to investigate.

Neighbor Sandra Smith told WABI-TV (http://bit.ly/1aHzFKS ) that the girl's father was distraught when he came running out of the apartment, and that the girl was breathing and had her eyes open when she was taken to the hospital.

Police say that Ciancia, 23, went to LAX on Friday morning, pulled a rifle out of a bag and began shooting at TSA agents, killing a 39-year-old screener, identified as Gerardo I. Hernandez, the first TSA officer killed in the line of duty.

A law enforcement official told The Times that a note was found on the gunman expressing "disappointment in the government" and saying that he had no interest in hurting "innocent people."

Several witnesses said he appeared to shoot only at TSA agents and avoided shooting passengers. Ciancia was wounded by police. His condition was not released.

Another law enforcement source said the note contained the letters "NWO." Investigators are trying to determine whether he was a believer in the New World Order, a conspiracy theory which holds that forces are trying to create a single totalitarian government on Earth. The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, emphasized that it is still early in the investigation and that detectives are not sure what role, if any, "NWO" played in the case.

Local Fox NewsA Plainfield southwest suburban man has been charged with bringing a gun to the west suburban school where he worked, the Beacon-News is reporting.Michael T. Martin, 62, of Plainfield, a contractual worker for the Oswego School District 308 IT Department, has been charged with unlawful use of a weapon on school property, a Class 3 felony.He was taken to the Kendall County Jail to await a bond hearing.Police said that at 9:12 a.m., an Oswego East High School staff member found a handgun in a locked faculty restroom on the second floor. As a safety measure, the school was put on lockdown.During the investigation, "the identity of a subject who was last in the restroom was determined and that subject was located off site for an interview," police said in a statement.Police said there is no evidence that the subject had any intention of doing anyone any harm.

The cops really want to punish the person who provided the gun to the kid. Well, that's good as far as it goes. But chances are it was provided to the 14-year-old shooter by another kid criminal. What they really need to determine is who was the last legal owner of the gun and how he let it slip into the criminal world. If that person failed to secure the gun properly or sold it to a disqualified person, he's the one who should be punished severely. That's the heart of the matter.

According to OPD reports, Sonny Kerekes, who moved in with his mother several months ago, told detectives he has owned the gun, a .38 revolver, which was his father’s, since his father died in the early 1980s.

He said he used the revolver to shoot sharks when he was a commercial fisherman in Miami. He said his mother wanted to see the gun, so he was taking it from a bag in which it had been stored. He said she was in the kitchen and he was in another room when the revolver accidentally went off and a bullet went through a wall.

He said he did not know his mother had been wounded until she told him about pain in her abdomen, at which point he called 911.

The 2nd amendment is about giving the states an absolute right to have their own armed militias which today has been transformed into the National Guard.It also guarantees that the states have the right to have the same weapons as a federal army, a right in existence today and has always been, since the National Guard of every state does have most of the same weapons that the Federal army has. National Guard units have tanks, they have fighter jets. They have bombers.And it's why National Guard units have been fighting in Iraq since 2002. The 2nd amendment guarantees the right of the states to have them. It is also what allowed the states of the Confederacy to have the weapons to fight a Civil War.

If you think the amendment gives an individual the right to have those weapons try putting a tank in your backyard.And keep in mind the entire amendment wasn't written so that it could be diced and sliced with words ignored to suit someone's purpose. The amendment means what it says.

The next line refers to " the right of the people...".

For those who don't know there are two types of rights enumerated in the Constitution, states rights and individual rights. As any Constitutional scholar will tell you, when the Framers were referring to a state's right they used the term "the people:". When they were referring to an individual right, they used the word " person".The 5th amendment is a good example. It begins with the words, "No person shall..." and lays out guarantees, among them, double jeopardy and that no person in a criminal case shall be compelled to be a witness against himself.

Once you understand who the Framers are referring to when they say "the people", which is a collective for the individual states, and not referring to an individual right, it's time to deal with the most misused and misunderstood part of the 2nd amendment - the words "to keep and bear arms".

The rest of the article is of interest too, but I like that part about the difference between people and person.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

We can start with Justice Scalia's taking the Second Amendment out of Constitutional and Legal context from it's relationship to USC Article I, Section 8, clause 16 which gives the US Congress the power to arm the militia--ONLY THE US CONGRESS. That was the concern which led up to the Second Amendment as a guarantee that Congress wouldn't neglect the militia in favour of the federal army. That means the the part about a "Well-regulated militia" is actually quite important to the understanding of the second amendment (come on, I've written about this quite extensively and you would know I am correct if you weren't lazy and actually did some research into the primary sources).

An example of this, Scalia's Heller decision is a classic case of the fallacy of taking something out of context:

The practice of quoting out of context, sometimes referred to as "contextomy", is a logical fallacy and a type of false attribution in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning. While "quote mining" is also used to indicate this, the phrase also has a broader meaning which can instead describe the summarisation of key points (or those someone is opting to focus on replying to) without distorted the meaning. Contextomies are stereotypically intentional, but may also occur accidentally if someone misinterprets the meaning and omits something essential to clarifying it, thinking it non-essential.

But, that isn't really my point, although it does help contribute the US's gun problem. Which I am sure is also something else which will get the usual "guns save lives" comment.

But, where is the proof that guns actually save lives? Isn't the data showing that guns are a problem? Wasn't that why the government funding was cut since it had this tendency to contribute to the gun control argument?

That is my point. The debate is being held in a state of laughable ignorance where people who propose the concept of "gun rights" make statements that more people die from baseball bats than guns.

Jeff Nesbit was the director of public affairs for two prominent federal science agencies who has written an article titled Instead of Studying Gun Violence, Americans Just Argue About It. In this article he points out that the unfortunate truth is this: Scientists
simply don't know if gun violence is a public-health epidemic, because
hard statistics either don't exist, aren't current, aren't readily
available or can't be researched nationally under the usual rules.
Until a few months ago, federal science agencies were essentially
barred from even studying gun violence within a public-health epidemic
framework.

The United States is the only country in the world that treats gun
ownership as a fundamental, human right. It's a privilege — not a right —
in every other country but America. In countries like Israel and
Sweden, you must prove that you have a need to own a gun before you're given a right to own one.
What prompts the public health question, over and over and over, is
news coverage of the latest, horrific stories of gun violence at public
places like schools. Everyone is appalled, and then forgets — until the
next incident.
Right now, Americans are following the awful story of a 12-year-old who
took a semi-automatic weapon from home to attack people at a middle
school in Nevada — killing a teacher who was heroically trying to stop
the violent act. Before that, it was the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
Before that it was Newtown. And before that it was Perry Hall, Aurora,
Tucson and Columbine, just to name a few. And tomorrow, it will be
somewhere else.
Americans now own more than 300 million guns. The best available
estimates in the United States — and they are just statistical estimates
— indicate that there are about 30,000 firearms-related deaths in the
U.S. each year, and more than twice that number of non-fatal incidents
involving firearms. The United States has the highest number of
gun-related injuries of any developed country in the world, according to
those estimates.
Is that a gun violence epidemic? Can it be viewed and approached like
an epidemic? Again, Americans don't know because our federal leaders —
and especially the leadership of federal science agencies like the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — have largely shied
away from studying it in this fashion for fear of the political
repercussions.
It's long past the time for at least this part of the public debate
regarding gun rights to stop. Long, long past time. There can be no harm
in knowing how many people die each year from firearms, where those
pockets of gun violence really are, and whether there are ways to
mitigate or interrupt the violence in those pockets.

The problem is that you can't have a proper debate if the debate is run in ignorance.

From the top: Cameron Johnson, Luther M. Williams, James D. Minor and David McNeil. (Photo credit: Caddo Sheriff’s Office)Guns dot comFour men have been arrested in connection with the theft of dozens of ARs from a gun distributor in Shreveport, Louisiana, but none of the guns have been recovered yet.

One of the men was a contract security guard on duty when the shipment of Colt AR-15 rifles arrived at the Con-way Freight facility on Oct. 12. He and three other men allegedly lifted a pallet containing 63 rifles, according to a statement by the Caddo Sheriff’s Office.

Two days later, company officials discovered the pallet missing. After an internal investigation failed to locate the missing pallet, company officials contacted the sheriff’s office, who has been working in cooperation with the ATF from the start.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance that places a confiscatory ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammo on Oct. 29.

Those who are in possession of the high-capacity magazines or high-capacity ammunition feeding devices will have 90 days to turn them over to police, sell them out-of-state or render them permanently inoperable. Failure to do so will result in misdemeanor charges.

“While not a panacea, this legislation provides law enforcement with more tools to continue to address gun violence and also continues to strengthen our city’s strong stance on gun regulation,” the bill’s sponsor, Supervisor Malia Cohen, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 2000, the state legislature placed a ban on the sale, transport, import or purchase of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, but gun owners who purchased 10-plus round magazines before the enactment of the state ban were grandfathered in.

For residents of San Francisco, that no longer holds true unless you qualify for the exemption, i.e. you’re a law enforcement officer, an armored car driver, a museum curator or a Hollywood movie/television producer (these magazines can be “used as props”), according to the law.

I'm not sure if I understand what people who own handguns that come with larger-than-10-round magazines are supposed to do. Can a Glock 17 magazine or a Glock 19 magazine be simply replaced with a 10-round mag?

A 47-year-old man convicted in the accidental shooting of a 6-year-old boy at a North Topeka hotel on New Year's Eve 2011 will report to jail Nov. 4 to start his sentence of one year and two months.

Peter John Blancas, of Topeka, entered a plea to one count of aggravated endangering a child, a low-level felony, on Aug. 29, according to court records.

The incident was ruled an accidental shooting, a police spokeswoman said three days after the shooting.

Blancas was booked into the Shawnee County Jail at 5:54 a.m. Jan. 1, 2012, in connection with two felonies — one count of aggravated battery and one count of criminal possession of a firearm — and nine misdemeanor counts of endangerment of a child.

When the child was shot, 13 people — four adults and nine children — were in the hotel room.

Blancas has a criminal history B, court records said, meaning he has two or more person felony convictions.

On Dec. 10, 2008, Blancas was sentenced in district court to intensive supervised probation for two years and two months after he pleaded no contest four months earlier to aggravated battery, according to court records.

Blancas also was sentenced in district court in 1997 to six months in jail after pleading no contest to two counts of domestic battery, court records said. In 1993, he pleaded no contest to battery and was placed on one year of supervised probation.

He also pleaded no contest in 1995 in district court to domestic battery and criminal trespassing and in 1996 to his third offense of driving while suspended.

The sentence was too light. This is the kind of guy who should receive ten years for what he did.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Arizona’s gun death rate is 40 percent higher than the national average.• Arizona is the 11th-worst state for gun deaths: There were 14.6 gun deaths for every 100,000 people in the state in 2010. That’s 40 percent higher than the national average of 10.3 gun deaths for every 100,000 people.Somebody is murdered by a gun in Arizona almost every day.• In Arizona there were 271 gun homicides in 2010.• From 2001 through 2010, 3,303 people were murdered by guns in Arizona. That number is almost double all U.S. combat deaths in the Afghanistan war.Women are more at risk of being killed by a gun in a domestic dispute in Arizona than almost anywhere else in the country.• Arizona had the eighth-highest rate of women killed by men, many of which were committed with a firearm. It had the 13th-highest gun homicide rate for women in the country.Arizona has received abysmal gun safety ratings. Weak gun laws put Arizonans at risk.• The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave Arizona an “F,” ranking it 49th out of 50 states.• The Daily Beast listed Arizona as the second “deadliest gun state” in the United States in 2011 because of its combination of permissive gun laws and a high rate of gun deaths.Weak laws make Arizona a favorite source state for gun traffickers.• Arizona had the 13th-highest rate of crime gun exports in 2009, a marker of illegal trafficking. Arizona supplied guns to out-of-state criminals at a rate of 75 percent above than the national average.82 Center for American Progress | Fact Sheet: Arizona Gun Violence

Police arrived at the boy's home Monday morning around 10 a.m. after Steine's mother Dione Warren found him on the ground, not breathing and bleeding from the head. Despite the amount of blood, Warren told 911 she thought the boy had fallen and struck his head on a bedside table. According to 7News, police found the preschooler's body next to his mother's bed and a semiautomatic handgun next to his head.

Six people have been found dead in a South Carolina home following an apparent domestic dispute.

Greenwood County Sheriff's Office spokesman John Long told The Associated Press late Tuesday that the dead include four adults and two children. He said the bodies were discovered by a SWAT team that entered the house "after several unsuccessful attempts to make contact" with someone inside.

Long says officers first went to the home in the city of Greenwood after receiving a call from a man who said he was thinking about hurting himself. He says while police were on their way, one of the man's neighbors called 911 saying children from that address had arrived at her house and told her a shot had been fired.

Long says a preliminary investigation indicates the shootings were "a domestic-related incident."

Deputies responded to the incident on U Highway in rural Christian County. Kyle said the child and her mother were visiting at the home. The mother walked next door to a neighbor's house. That's when a 24-year-old man who lived at the home began target shooting with a .22-caliber rifle. He was standing near a shed that partially obscured his view, Kyle said. The man said he was unaware the child was in the yard as he pulled the trigger and she darted in front of him.

A 12-year-old boy was killed Saturday afternoon in the woods near his house in Madison County in what authorities, and the boy’s father, are calling an accidental shooting.

Dax Dixon of Pratts, a small community in Madison, died Saturday afternoon while playing with a neighbor friend, the boy’s father, Dan Dixon, said Sunday.

The Madison County Sheriff’s Office responded to what it described as an accidental shooting involving two juveniles shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday, a news release said. Deputies found Dax Dixon dead at the scene, the release said.

51. Washington D.C.Permit Issuance: 0Reciprocity: 0Training Time: 0Application Fee: 0Stand Your Ground: 0Best States for Gun Owners: 0Duty to Inform: 0Pre-Emption: 0Issued to Non-Residents: 0TOTAL: 0It’s hard to believe any place in the United States—aside from places such as prisons and mental institutions—could possibly score a zero. Until the recent Heller Supreme Court decision, residents weren’t even allowed to own guns. No magazines are allowed that hold more than 10 rounds, there is no law permitting concealed carry, and there is no Castle Doctrine law.

1. ArizonaPermit Issuance: 25Reciprocity: 18Training Time: 10Application Fee: 10Stand Your Ground: 10Best States for Gun Owners: 10Duty to Inform: 5Pre-Emption: 5Issued to Non-Residents: 5TOTAL: 98 After taking the top spot in “The Best States for Gun Owners,” Arizona tops the leaderboard once again. As a “Constitutional Carry” state, anyone 21 and over who can legally own a firearm can carry it concealed without a license. In addition, Arizona issues licenses on a Shall-Issue basis, allowing residents and non-residents to carry their weapons when traveling out-of-state. Arizona also has no duty to immediately inform an officer, has excellent reciprocity and a Stand Your Ground law.

The state is holstering a key provision of Gov. Cuomo’s gun control law requiring first-ever background checks on ammunition purchases.

Under the gun law passed earlier this year, the state could have begun requiring background checks as of this coming Jan. 15. It also could have ordered sellers of ammunition to begin keeping key information on buyers, including their names, the amount of bullets purchased, their addresses, and occupations.

But the State Police Sunday they are delaying implementation, a move first reported by the Buffalo News, until it can develop the needed database system allowing it to move forward.

Officials said the national instant background check system used for firearm purchases can not be used for ammunition sales.

“The State Police is working on technology solutions to be able to carry out this section of the SAFE Act so that the public, buyers and sellers are not

inconvenienced or delayed in any way when they purchase ammunition,” said agency spokeswoman Darcy Wells.

Wells said one provision that will go into affect as planned on Jan. 15 is a requirement that all ammunition dealers register with the state.

Each year, millions of people go to gun ranges and there are generally a few suicides. One gun range manager says he refuses service to customers because "it didn't feel right." (AP File Photo)Lehigh Valley NewsIf there's one thing Ken LeVan has learned over the past 20 years, it's how to read people.

Firing Line indoor shooting range in North Whitehall Township. The setup is similar to that of The Heritage Guild in Williams Township, where two 54-year-old men have used guns to commit suicide since April.

LeVan said he has had to refuse service to customers at The Firing Line, 4671 Egypt Road, on several occasions because "it didn't feel right." He recalled one situation in which a man appeared nervous, pacing back and forth.

"He was soaking wet from perspiration," he said.

He turned the man away, avoiding what could have been a bad situation, he said.

The gun range hasn't had any incidents in the 28 years it's been open.

The number of US kids and teens who die from gunshot wounds in hospital has risen almost 60% in a decade, according to a new report. The study by two doctors looked at data from 1997 to 2009, and found the number of those hospitalized with gunshot wounds rose from 4,270 to 7,730, while the number of those that then died from them climbed from 317 to 503, NBC Newsreports. Eight out of 10 of the wounds came from handguns, says study author Arin L. Madenci. "Furthermore, states with higher percentages of household firearm ownership also tended to have higher proportions of childhood gunshot wounds, especially those occurring in the home," he says.

As a result of the findings, the authors say, perhaps the national conversation about gun control should move from larger semi-automatic weapons to limiting the number of smaller firearms in homes. "While public health resources and policies have largely focused on military-style semi-automatic assault weapons, it may be more crucial to intervene on handguns," says Madenci, per Medical Daily. The director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research tells Discovery that research and data like this has been sorely lacking in the field since Congress stopped funding it in the 1990s. "I see this as a huge step forward," he says.

How then to reduce the number of thefts? Many states are considering mandatory reporting of the loss or thefts of firearms. This would help greatly if it is done in conjunction with implementation of universal background checks and a requirement for persons who transfer firearms to retain records allowing meaningful tracing of weapons used in crime. The possibility that a stolen gun will result in the owner being identified and being held responsible for negligence is a strong incentive to improve storage practices. Existing household insurance may or may not be written with language that covers this situation but should be required to do so.

We could go further and adopt legislation stipulating that a gun owner who's gun was stolen is responsible for the damage the gun causes at a later time. While courts have refused to apply common law strict liability after a theft, there is no such limitation stopping it from being enacted by statute if legislatures decide to do so. In fact some legislation introduced in the last year in various states has attempted to do this, at least for a limited time or if the theft is not reported. There are other possible measures: Loss of control of a gun could create a presumption of negligence and fault in a manner similar to the presumption for drivers who strike other vehicles from the rear. Specific requirements for locking up guns in the owner's absence and not leaving guns in cars could be mandated and failure to do so could be made a crime; but ever harsher penalties have a diminishing return in stopping either criminals from committing crimes or honest citizens from being careless.

A lot of gun owners consider their guns their own business, but when they're stolen they're everybody's business.

The Chicago TribuneA man who killed four members of a neighboring family and their two dogs with a shotgun before taking his own life over the weekend in Arizona may have been sent into a rage by the dogs' barking, police said on Sunday.

But police said what drove 56-year-old Michael Guzzo of Phoenix to carry out the shooting frenzy may never be known for certain, as both he and his victims, who ranged in age from 17 to 66 and lived next door, were dead before officers arrived."It appears he had some issues with barking dogs," said Phoenix police spokesman Sergeant Tommy Thompson. "If true, it does not justify killing four people."